Oxford Semiconductor Announces New Eight-Channel UART to PCI Controller; Single-Chip Solution Tackles High-Density Serial Connectivity

Business Wire, Jan 24, 2006

MILPITAS, Calif. -- Oxford Semiconductor Inc., a leading provider of high-performance connectivity solutions for consumer, storage and multimedia applications, today announced it has added a new controller to its line of connectivity solutions. Combining eight high-performance Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitters (UARTs) and a PCI-compliant host interface in a single chip, the OX16PCI958 communications controller from Oxford Semiconductor provides designers with the means to dramatically simplify multi-port serial to PCI bus design.

An alternative to many dual-chip solutions, the OX16PCI958 is compliant with the PCI local bus specification 3.0 and PCI power management specification 1.1 and benefits a wide range of PCI-based hardware applications, including POS equipment, industrial automation systems and remote servers.

"The number of connected devices in these types of applications is increasing and the requirement for a cost-effective, single-chip solution is on the rise," said Adrian Braine, Oxford Semiconductor marketing manager, serial bridge products. "We have taken Oxford's expertise in high-performance UARTs and have extended it to offer this PCI interface to eight serial port solution designed specifically for high-density applications."

The highly integrated OX16PCI958 offers significant PCB space savings, and by supporting both 3.3V and 5.0V bus systems, this cost-effective part enables the development of add-in cards with universal application appeal. Highly programmable, the controller offers deep FIFOs with tunable trigger levels, hardware out-of-band flow control and a clock prescaler enabling designers to optimize data flows and configure application-specific data rates up to a maximum of 4.125Mega baud using a 16.5MHz clock. The OX16PCI958 is software-compatible with industry-standard 16C550 types and the UART ports are easily configured to suit the needs of RS232 and RS422 applications.

Oxford Semiconductor is supporting its latest high-performance UART/PCI bridge solution with drivers for Windows 98, 2000, XP and CE as well as Linux operating systems, an evaluation board and comprehensive application note.

The OX16PCI958 is priced at $15.50 USD in 10,000-piece quantities and is sampling now.

About Oxford Semiconductor

Oxford Semiconductor designs and markets high-performance connectivity solutions for the storage, multimedia communication, computing, and industrial markets. Founded in 1992, Oxford is a privately owned company with headquarters in Milpitas. Oxford recently acquired TransDimension, a fabless semiconductor company based in Irvine, Calif. TransDimension provides USB connectivity solutions and software for embedded applications.

As the market leader in IEEE1394 (FireWire) and USB interface controllers for direct attached storage applications, Oxford Semiconductor has shipped more than 10 million devices, and today supplies all of the world's major external storage manufacturers.

Oxford Semiconductor also has a strong reputation in high-speed serial communication chips, and offers complete solutions for bridging between a wide range of standard computer interfaces.

Through its FireWire audio controllers, Oxford Semiconductor has led the development of breakout boxes, external sound cards and multi-channel speaker systems, providing laptop users with quality sound for the very first time. More information about Oxford Semiconductor can be found at http://www.oxsemi.com.